4of4Quarterback Vince Young of the Texas Longhorns meets with Reggie McNeal of the Texas A&M Aggies at the end of the game on November 25, 2005 at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas. The Longhorns defeated the Aggies 40-29.Photo: Ronald Martinez /Getty Images

But if Fisher wants to get anything done in College Station, he had better find a way to beat the rival his team doesn’t play and his fan base doesn’t acknowledge. And the same goes for Herman in Austin.

What we know for sure is at least one of them will be a failure. This grudge match might not be a zero-sum game in the traditional sense, because both sides can lose, but it has proven to be highly unlikely that both sides can win.

Anyone who says this state is big enough for Texas and Texas A&M both to be great is dead wrong.

And we have a century worth of data to prove it.

Maybe you’ve never noticed this before. After all, it is not discussed much, if at all. As football-obsessed Texans, we are raised to believe that there are two traditional college powerhouses in this state, and that both of them boast a long, proud history predating most of our births.

That, of course, is true. But take a closer look and you will notice something curious about the peaks and valleys of those two proud histories, and how they almost never match up.

The Associated Press has been conducting a poll ranking college football teams since 1934. During all of that time, the Longhorns and Aggies have both finished in the Top 10 of the same postseason poll exactly one time.

The year was 1941.

UT and A&M — which have share arguably the nation’s most fertile recruiting ground and are two of the wealthiest athletic departments in the country — have not won at least 10 games in the same season since 1975.

They haven’t found a way to both be great.

In fact, they’ve almost never both been pretty good.

Only nine times in the 84-year history of the AP poll have both the Longhorns and Aggies finished ranked at all.

Compare this with other storied intrastate rivalries. Alabama and Auburn have both finished ranked in the same poll in 11 of the past 25 years. Florida and Florida State have finished in the same Top 10 — something UT and A&M have done only once in history — 10 times in the last 27 years.

For whatever reason, good news for either the Longhorns or the Aggies always has meant at least moderately bad news for the other. During the first decade of this century, when Mack Brown had UT entrenched among the national elite on a yearly basis, A&M couldn’t get its act together. The same held true of the Longhorns during the heyday of both R.C. Slocum and Jackie Sherrill, and for the Aggies during the reign of Darrell Royal.

Misery might love company, but south of the Red River, success sure doesn’t.

Interestingly enough, this trend even applies to the upstart programs that have risen to fill the occasional void of UT and A&M fallow periods. For instance, when Baylor and TCU both were vying for a national title four years ago, the Longhorns and Aggies both stunk. The closest this state ever had to having two bona fide championship contenders at the same time was in 1981, when UT finished No. 2 in the AP poll and SMU was No. 5.

As we would discover later, in those days there was a financial reason why a second Lone Star State school was able to keep the region’s biggest recruits close to home. Over the years, one of the biggest problems in establishing a synchronicity of UT-A&M dominance is that both schools face so much competition from out-of-state talent poachers. That is still true today.

If either the Longhorns or Aggies have a staff that makes particularly significant recruiting headway in a given year, it does not necessarily mean the other school will wind up with the best of the leftovers.

High-profile national programs like Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia and Ohio State always are going to swoop in and get their share of Texas talent. So even though Herman was able to sign what 24/7 Sports rated as the nation’s No. 3 recruiting class last spring, that did not immunize him from the Fisher effect at A&M. According to 24/7’s latest rankings for 2019, the Aggies have a top-three class, while the Longhorns have had to claw their way into the top 10.

That’s why Fisher’s arrival in College Station has the potential to make a long-term impact in Austin — even if the two programs never meet on the field. If he turns the Aggies into consistent winners, history says that could spell doom for Herman.

Right now, Herman has a team in the preseason Top 25 and Fisher doesn’t. If he relinquishes that edge any time soon, he might find it difficult to get it back.

As for the idea that this state finally might be big enough for both of them? It’s possible, but unlikely.

Mike Finger has worked for the Express-News since 1999, writing about the Texas Longhorns, the Big 12, the NBA and the NFL before becoming a sports columnist. He's covered 13 Spurs postseasons, six Final Fours and more than a dozen college bowl games.